Jim Backus

For anyone who grew up in the 1960s, watching "Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol" was probably an annual tradition. Though such award-winning actors as Fredric March, George C. Scott and Albert Finney have played miserly Scrooge in various versions of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," they were outdone by Mr. Magoo . . . actually, by the late Jim Backus, who provided the memorable voice for the befuddled, myopic Magoo. Mr. Magoo as Scrooge? "Bah, humbug," you say?

The stars of the 1955 classic movie "Rebel Without a Cause" were James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Dennis Hopper, Nick Adams--and a 1949 Mercury Sport Sedan driven by Dean. That Merc returns to Southern California Sunday after an absence of 35 years--this time as the silent star of the Beverly Hills Charity Car Show. It will play alongside American classics and European exotics once owned or driven by Tony Curtis, Clark Gable, Steve McQueen and Delores Del Rio.

It was only last Monday that PBS presented a new production of Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice." Just six nights later, CBS gives us "Surviving Gilligan's Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History." Ain't TV great? As exercises in nostalgia go, "Surviving Gilligan's Island" (9 p.m. Sunday, CBS) is at least inventive.